Project Based Learning for Out of School Time

By Chris Wilkins

John Dewey, one of the principal designers of our educational system, had it right in 1850 when he noted, "If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow."

We no longer live in an industrial age where we must train workers to fill an incredibly narrow and limited role in an assembly line; a line where no thinking needed to take place and where critical thinking and solution oriented strategies were a hindrance, not a benefit.

The US Department of Commerce estimates that our students will have a new job every three years.  It is also estimated that in the next ten years we will double our collective, global knowledge.  Thus, we are preparing the students of today to tackle the problems of tomorrow with technologies that haven't been invented yet.

That's where PBL comes in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Wilkins
• Release date: Jun 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227223456

Book preview

Project Based Learning

for Out of School Time

Chris Wilkins

Copyright © 2016 by Chris Wilkins

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

1.Overview to the Guide

2.Why Should I Care About Project Based Learning?

3.Projects vs Project Based Learning

4. PBL is PERFECT for After School

5.The So What? Factor and Student Engagement

6.PBL Basics: The Driving Question

7.The So What? Test

8.PBL Basics: Standards & Significant Content

9.21st Century Skills

10.PBL Basics: Student Voice & Choice

11.PBL Basics: Critique & Assessment

12.PBL Basics: Presentation

13.PBL Basics: Reflection

14.Creating a Space for PBL

15.An Active Democracy or Student Voice & Choice?

16.Artful Feedback

17.Collaboration - Not Coblabberration

18.Rubrics & Expectations

19.Building a PL Unit from the Ground Up

20.Brainstorming the Project Idea

21.Backward Planning

22.How Long Should the Unit Be?

23.Measuring Success: Assessing PBL

24.About The Author

25.References

Overview to the Guide

This guide is designed to take you step by step through the process of creating and completing your own Project Based Learning units. In its simplest form, you could consider this PBL 101 for Out of School Time.

As you move through each section you will note various symbols which contain valuable nuggets of information we have isolated in order to give them special emphasis and to ensure you can quickly locate them again. Here are the symbols and their associated content descriptions:

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Why Should I Care About Project Based Learning?

John Dewey, one of the principal designers of our original education system, had it right in 1850 when he noted, If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.

We no longer live in an industrial age where we must train workers to fill an incredibly narrow and limited role in an assembly line; a line where no thinking need to take place and where critical thinking and solution oriented strategies were a hindrance, not a benefit.

And, yes, it is true that in a classroom dedicated to sit and get —where students practice the ancient art of compliance by sitting quietly in straight rows as the teacher practices the equally ancient art of sage on the stage delivering the content—some learning is going to happen. However, we know that the duration of the learned material is short as little of the information has any context surrounding it to place in our long-term memory, and we know that for many students, little to no learning of significance will take place.

The more pervasive problem with direct instruction is that it is not often followed up with any type of application for the new material and, as we know, that only works for some of the students. However, those students who seem